Categories of Peasants and Their Duties

The Domesday Book gives us an exact account of England at that time. Alongside with other valuable information it gives us the number of peasant families of each manor, the different categories the peasantry was divided into and the amount of land they held.

The lord of the manor kept for himself many of the strips of land in the open fields. The other strips were held by the serfs. In return for their land-holdings the serfs were forced to perform various duties.

The most numerous category of the English peasants were villeins. The villeins were part of the manor and had no right to leave it. If the manor was given or sold to another lord the villeins remained on it. They could not be sold away from the manor. They were kept in villeinage, as it was called, and they were obliged to remain in the village and work for the lord. If a villein ran away and was caught he would be brought back in chains and punished severely for trying to escape.

The average holding of the villein was thirty acres. The villeins had to work on the lord’s domain three or even more days a week all year round. They had to perform week-work, or corvee-work that meant mainly the work in the fields. They ploughed and sowed the lord’s land, reaped the harvest and carried it to the lord’s barns. The villeins had to use their own carts and ploughs drawn by their own oxen.

But the work in the fields was not their only week-work. The villeins could be ordered to do any kind of work: to repair the manor-house, build barns, gather fruit and so on. At harvest time the villeins had to do extra work, called boon-work, so that the lord’s harvest could be gathered in during fine weather. The villeins had no right to cut their own corn until the lord’s harvest was reaped, and if the weather changed it would be their corn, and not their lord’s, that would be spoiled.

The villeins worked in the lord’s fields from sunrise to sunset and were allowed to work their land-holdings only when they were not wanted to do week-work or boon- work. They worked hard all year round, since they not only grew food, but also made nearly everything they wore and used, from spoons, shirts, shoes and stools, to wagons and harness for the oxen.

Not everything produced by the villeins on their hold­ings belonged to them. A part of the produce of their farms was paid as quit-rent to the lord of the manor, another part was paid as the tithe, or the tenth, to the Church, that is one-tenth of their harvest as well as of their wool, their cattle, and other products such as butter, meat, leather and so on.

Quit-rent and the tithe were not the only payments made by the villeins. The villein had no right to sell his ox or his horse without first asking his lord’s permission. He could not marry or let his sons and daughters marry without his lord’s permission either. And he had to make special payments to get such permission. When he died, his son or brother who succeeded to his strips had to give the lord an ox or a cow. It was the lord’s privilege to own a mill and an oven in the village. If the lord found that one of the villagers had millstones of his own, he had the right to break up. In this way the villein was compelled to bring his grain to the lord’s mill to be ground and he left a part of the flour to pay for the grinding; he had to take his bread to be baked in the lord’s oven and left a loaf in payment. The lord and his steward made sure that every single vil­lein paid for the use of his property. Moreover, the lord could tax his villeins at will.

A part of the peasantry remained free after the Norman Conquest. The free peasants lived mainly in the counties of the old Danelaw and some in other counties. The free peasants bringing corn to be ground at the lord’s mill. (An illustration peasants were owners of land (they were called freeholders), but their position had changed greatly. The lord of the manor had power not only over the villeins but over the freeholders as well. The freeholders were now subject to trial by the lord’s court. They had to perform a number of duties and make some payments to the lord. However, their duties were much lighter than those of the villeins and they were not bound to the land they lived on, they were considered personally free.

The English village of the 11th-12th centuries also had cottars. A cottar possessed a very small hut called a cottage and had only three or four acres of land. The cottars kept poultry, cattle and sheep. Like the other villagers they used common pastures, forests, rivers and lakes. Some of the cottars were villeins and had to work for the landowner in return for their small land-holdings; others were freeholders. But since their plots of arable land were too small to live on, both free cottars and serf cottars had to do various jobs on the manor to make ends meet. They worked either in the lord’s fields or as herdsmen, blacksmiths, wheelwrights and so on.

Although the establishment of feudalism had already begun in England during the Anglo-Saxon period, it was completed, in the main, by the beginning of the 13th cen­tury. Now, it was the serf peasants who made up the bulk of the population in the country. They were in the power of their landlords who exploited them.

As compared to the slave system feudalism was a step forward in the development of mankind. The serf was better- off than the slave had been. He had a cottage, his own agri­cultural implements and cattle; he held strips of land which were passed on by inheritance in his family and he could not be sold separately from the land. He grew his own food and the clothing which he wore was made from the wool of his own sheep. He could sell the produce of his farm, rent land from other peasants or even from another lord. He was a villein of his lord but he was considered free in relation to other men with whom he could make any bargain. The serf was interested in working on his own farm and his labour was much more productive than that of the slave.

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Adam Underwood, Warwickshire, held thirty acres of his lord, the Earl of Warwick, and in return he had to give the following services and dues:

1) Work every other day except Saturday, that is, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from October to August. Work two days a week from August to October. The work could be ploughing, haymaking, harvesting, carting stones (for walls and buildings), gathering nuts.

2) Work at love-boons, at haymaking and harvest.

3) Give dues of seven bushels of oats, a hen, a food for three horses, one penny for every pig over a year old, and a halfpenny for younger ones.